Graham Swift - Shuttlecock

‘Sir, I — ’

‘No, no, it’s all right. You’re a responsible junior, acting according to his conscience.’

He took off his glasses and began to rub them diligently with a handkerchief. When people take off their glasses it gives them a vulnerable appearance; but at this moment it was as though Quinn was indicating he was prepared to fight without artificial protection.

‘You know I’ll be leaving this job in three and a half months.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘It won’t be me who’s sitting here then. Three and a half months.’

He held up his glasses to the light, squinted at them, huffed, and began rubbing again.

‘Tell me something else, Prentis. Allow me to ask some questions just for the moment. You’ll have your turn for yours to be answered, but let me clear up mine first. The others — Fletcher, Clarke, O’Brien — have they noticed any of these things you’ve mentioned?’

‘I don’t know, sir. They may have done, but never spoken about it.’

‘But nonetheless, it’s you and not one of them who’s come forward with this suspicion. Why do you think that is?’

‘I don’t know, sir. I am — the most senior of them. And — with respect sir — there have been previous occasions, talking with you — ’

‘Could it just be that they are simple, trusting souls who want a quiet life and ask no questions?’

He finished polishing his glasses and replaced them over his nose.

‘How long have you been in this department, Prentis?’

‘Eight years.’

‘Do you think it’s a good job?’

‘I can’t complain, sir.’ (Liar. You’re a persecuted little drudge.) ‘The conditions, the — ’

‘No, no, no. I mean the function we perform here. Do you think it’s a good one?’

‘I don’t know it’s something you can judge like that. Basically, we provide information.’

‘But do you think it’s a good thing to provide information?’

He got up and moved towards the window, turning his back towards me.

‘Have you had moments in your life, Prentis, when you’ve found yourself asking the simple question: Is it better to know things or not to know them? Wouldn’t we sometimes be happier not knowing them? Know what I mean?’

For a moment I thought: He’s stalling. He’s not going to tell me anything. I will have to resort to other methods. Break into his office at night and crack his safe. Silence the security guard with a stiletto.…

‘I think so, sir.’

‘And what’s your answer been?’

‘I don’t know. Circumstances usually decide that for you. It can be — a torment not knowing things.’

‘Ah yes. Quite so. You suffer either way.’

He turned round, away from the window. For some reason his face seemed pinker and pudgier than I’d ever known it.

‘Do you know what I think of this job, Prentis?’

‘No sir.’

‘It’s — uncomfortable. That chair —’ he pointed to the big black leather chair which, though unoccupied, seemed to have a masterful, sinister quality of its own — ‘is uncomfortable. Try it. All this information we sit on, Prentis. Do you know how I sometimes imagine this place? A big cupboard for the collected skeletons of half the metropolitan population. And I’m the one with the key. Oh, I don’t mean the things we have to let out for quite specific reasons. But just think for a moment of all those innocent, unwitting people whose peace of mind might be shattered by some little titbit we have here. It’s an odd thing, Prentis, looking at other people’s lives and seeing the dangers that they’re unaware of. Like — looking at a fly and wondering: shall I swot it?’

As it happened — as though expressly to provide Quinn with his image — a fly had flown into the room through the opened window only minutes before, and after buzzing several times round the desk settled on the rim of a cup of coffee which Quinn had only half drunk. Yet, oddly enough, he did not brush it away.

‘There was a time when I didn’t like this job, Prentis. All this accumulated evil, constantly sifting through it. You have to admit it gets you down. It sticks to your hands, so to speak. Doesn’t it?’

‘Er, yes sir.’

‘I used to tell myself that the solution was simply to curb one’s imagination. You’ve heard me tell you to do just that enough times, haven’t you? But you can no more curb the imagination than you can stop the truth being what it is. Do you follow me, Prentis?’

‘I’m not sure, sir.’

‘Never mind. Then I started to think that precisely because I had access to all this evil, I was in a position to do real good. I thought, perhaps one can wipe out certain harms simply by erasing the record of those harms. With me? But I’m not sure, now, if you can do that. I’m not sure at all.’

He moved across the room and perched himself on the edge of his desk. There was something almost comical about this casual posture in a man like Quinn. His lame leg swung and knocked against the panelling of the desk with an oddly solid thump.

‘What do you think, Prentis? Is it right?’

Once more, he did not wait for my reply. He twisted round and pressed the intercom on his desk.

‘Miss Reynolds — be a dear and bring in another two cups of coffee.’

He turned back and took a deep breath. ‘I seem to have said enough, don’t I? No, I’m not trying to duck your questions. I’ll answer them. But I don’t know if this is the right time or place.’ He picked up a diary from the desk. ‘You want to know — everything, don’t you? Would you care to come and see me, one evening after work — at my home?’

Two years ago, if Quinn had invited me to his home, I would have gone, uneasily, regarding it as an office duty. Now I was not sure whether I was walking into some strange friendship — or a trap.

‘You look alarmed, Prentis. Yes, I know. Nobody knows much about me outside the office. The office persona and all that.’ He smiled sourly again. ‘You probably know more about any number of people in our records than you do about me. But I do have a home, and a home life of sorts.’

He had a pen poised over the diary.

‘What day would you like? You can get to Richmond?’

‘Richmond?’

‘Richmond, yes.’

‘Wednesday?’ I don’t know why I said that day.

‘Wednesday. Fine. Shall we say about eight? Ah — Miss Reynolds.’

Miss Reynolds (a frosty-faced spinster of some years, renowned in the office as ‘The Iron Lady’, and the perfect partner to Quinn) entered with a tray with coffee and biscuits. She put it down on Quinn’s desk and removed the dirty cup — from which the fly buzzed upwards. She brushed at it with her hand, then left the room.

Quinn, like the avuncular figure in the biscuit commercial in which I sometimes mentally cast him, poured, stirred, asked, ‘Milk? Sugar?’ and proffered cup and saucer. It was because, I found myself thinking again, he had none of the outward attributes of power — height, sternness of feature or manner — and because, in some way, power really did not suit him at all, that his actual power so impressed — and maddened me.

‘You look baffled, Prentis. As you say, it can be a torment not knowing things.’

I had confronted this formidable man who now was offering me coffee and Lincoln Creams. It did not seem such a daring act.

Quinn sipped his coffee. Through the glass panel I caught a brief glimpse of the office — Eric, Vic and O’Brien hunched at their desks like guinea-pigs in some controlled experiment.

The fly circled in towards the desk and settled on the plate of biscuits. We looked at it closely for some seconds and then, as if agreed on something, at each other.